In brief...: Warning on pensions

Public sector pensions will cost every UK household £40,000 over the next few years, it has been claimed.

Research by the TaxPayers' Alliance found there are 8,500 retired NHS employees with retirement benefits of £1million.

The organisation has previously found there are another 3,700 retired civil servants with pension pots of the same size. An estimate for the Institute for Economic Affairs suggested the bill for unfunded public sector pension liabilities stood at £1,025billion - more than £40,000 for each household.

Corin Taylor, research director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Urgent change is needed to reduce the bill to taxpayers - for a start, the pension age for existing public sector employees should be raised to the state pension age."